I'll start with this one, left by Efrique:
And on Watchmen... what's the big deal about nudity anyhoo? In my mind, altogether too much is made of bodies. What's the difference between seeing some guy in Speedos and seeing them nude? It's not a huge difference, really.Um... yes. Yes, it is. In this case, huge is the operative word. Especially on an IMAX screen.
Ordinarily, I'd agree completely that nudity is no big deal. However, truth compels me to dissent this time round. In this movie, it was a very big deal indeed. In fact, it put me in mind of the time I discovered my pony was a boy.
You'll see what I mean.
On a side note, one of the things that delighted me about the nudity in this movie was that many of the characters looked like almost-normal people (with one - shall we say - towering exception). In other words, there was meat on dem bones. Seeing a woman who didn't look like she was on a starvation diet is utterly refreshing. And, although she does not have the waist of a corset victim and the tits of Pamela Anderson, she is still smokin' hot.
I hope this begins a trend, although I worry they may have exchanged heroin chic for penis envy....
With apologies to McLuhan, to some extent the audience is the message. Two people see the same thing and understand something completely different from it. The message is shaped by the technical movie-making process after it leaves the mind of the author, by the promotional frame around the movie, and by the movie viewing environment - these are "medium as message" stages. Then the audience member changes the message again by filtering through cultural and personal associations. In our culture, those associations can outweigh all the other factors for many individuals, utterly distorting the message.
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